For a while, I played with this idea for today: I was going to ask one of our graphic artists to design a pair of cutout blinders that we could run above my column. I would then suggest giving them to any bowler coming to Syracuse for next month’s national women’s championships, since blinders would be the only sure way of shielding visitors from piles of garbage along our interstate gateways.

I ditched that theme for a reason: It might be good for a cheap laugh, but how would it help? Regional officials with the state Department of Transportation say they no longer have the money to hire contractors for cleaning the interstates. They’ll do their best with inhouse crews, but the garbage is formidable: It’s been a few years since a contractor did a “fence to fence” cleanup. With volunteer crews banned for safety reasons from downtown stretches of Interstates 81 or 690, many portions of those roads resemble a dump.

The real question: As a community, do we think our civic appearance really matters? If so, in cash-strapped times, how do we make a change?

I’ve written about the situation for a long time, and I worry sometimes that I sound like Captain Ahab, shaking his fist at the white whale. Yet emotional feedback from readers leaves me believing much of Central New York feels the same way. In any event, I’ve been invited to take part in a Sierra Club roundtable tonight on trash and litter in greater Syracuse, and each participant will give an opening statement about why we need a cleaner town.

This is my take. My parents, products of the World War II generation, grew up in Buffalo, which — like Syracuse — spun into decline about 40 or 50 years ago. I vividly remember my folks, over coffee at the kitchen table, speaking with weariness about layers of garbage they’d started to see along the roads.

To them, the trash was more than an aggravation. It was a symbol of something that had gone very wrong. They were raised in a time of tightly knit city neighborhoods. While possessions were few, a sense of community was strong. To pick up trash, to sweep your walk, became statements of pride in your home and respect for your neighbors. That ethic extended to the city as a whole, because your city — and its reputation — was a part of you.

Now? That connection still holds true, in a harsher way. We have deep problems in Syracuse. Thousands of children grow up in despair, and the results can be joblessness, prison, addiction or early death. High school graduation rates hover around 50 percent. Many residents are tenants, and many landlords live miles from the homes they own. Some are passionate about caring for their properties. Others, for many reasons, have checked out.

As for garbage, what is it except a symptom of our core affliction? By evidence of the act itself, motorists — urban or suburban — who throw bags of fast-food trash from their car windows have no connection, none, to the community around them. The influence of garbage can be insidious: As former city schools superintendent Lionel Meno said recently, children see a reflection of themselves in the appearance of the streets and the school grounds where they walk.

If adults don’t care enough to bag up garbage — if a kid smashes a bottle in a school parking lot, and the shattered glass is still there a week later — the message to a child is all too clear. Garbage is one obvious sign of the emotional divorce, the catastrophic disconnect, that is at the heart of so much heartbreak in our city.

While the deeper crisis may defy easy answers, we need not surrender to something as maddening as litter. In the late 1990s, when the men’s Bowling Congress came to Syracuse, many bowlers — after getting a good look at the interstates — went home to observe on the Internet that Syracuse was one filthy city.

Must that happen again, once the women bowlers arrive next month? Would it really be so impossible for a coalition of leaders from the state, city, county and business community to figure out a collective way — allied with hundreds, if not thousands, of willing volunteers — to do a massive cleanup of our highways and high-profile streets?

Compared to larger struggles, sure, the victory would be mainly symbolic. Still, trashed roads send a profound message to visitors and residents alike about the basic nature of Syracuse. That garbage also underlines a fundamental question: If we can’t map out a cooperative plan for bagging some trash, how can we possibly roll back elements of civic tragedy?

That’s essentially what I’ll say tonight, with a summary that goes something like this: We either get rid of this trash, or we settle for those blinders.